I put up a video a while ago advancing my theory about how increased board dithering (staircasing) has changed the role of Transformers [link].

Building upon that theory I researched and built many teams which focused more on Spawning Gems and less on Transforming. I would like to share one of those teams with you all which shows how to put the theory to successful practice.

Nice team. I watched this and watched your linked video to your staircase conspiracy. Clever stuff. But I don’t think I agree that there’s any evidence there’s been a code change to cause the board to limit infinite transform loop teams. Mine still work fine. Unless Mab is on the other side.

Fair enough. I try to keep my video sentences concise because if I don’t self-edit I’ll go on ad nausea. My old Transform teams still ‘work’ but the efficiency ground down to the point I needed to adjust, and I needed a theory to build my new play style around first.

First the new-ish system of how Procs are handled has depreciated Link Traits which are key to many Transform teams in my personal style. Also adjustments to how Mana and Skull blobs were calculated necessitated a personal changed because I relied so heavily on that for damage. Again personal style.

The only thing I could really talk about in the video was my theory of how board convolution has changed subtly or I felt there wouldn’t be anything for individuals to take away or to meditate on. I don’t like to say “do this that” so all I could hope for is that people reflect on what I say, take what they like and leave the rest if not all of it.

The team build is a practical application of my theory. I hope you try it out

I just tried that combination with WB and it works nicely, not as quickly as Infernus team, because Asha’s purple link trait helps Infernus a lot. But still, it was a very fast victory for me, and I had lots of fun too. Thank you for this great idea.

Also adjustments to how Mana and Skull blobs were calculated necessitated a personal changed because I relied so heavily on that for damage.

I think this is more of a factor than anything else that might have been done in terms of limiting the hard-looping transform teams. I don’t see any difference in how easy or difficult it is to go from one step to the next (even after multiple steps), but it clearly takes more steps to achieve the same result. That makes those teams slower and less fun to play than they were before and also increases the number of times that a loop will stall before your goals are achieved (whether that is collecting mana, doing damage, or whatever).

The hard-looping teams were never really my thing, but the difference in the effectiveness of Kraken (for example) before and after the blob-resolution change is shocking. Those hard-looping teams still have a place in my lineup and I still use them when the situation dictates, but I’m not likely to run-off five or ten PVP’s before switching to something else now, where I might have before.

I’ve been trying this team for half a day today, something around 100 battles. There are two obvious weak spots.

First is combo breaker when it comes to Owl. The Owl does miss and not so rarely. There is no way to make it work reliably. If it is 5th cast in a row and beyond, it will miss. I had it miss with 20 red on the board, did not manage to get more than that. it is random after all. Once it misses, the AI usually gets multiple cascades, team wipe ensured against a reasonably strong opponent.

Second, extra turn after casting Infernus is problematic. Chance here is not that variable. Average is more than 50% but less than 80%, something around 65% might be the right estimate. The board is obviously becoming completely unpredictable after that and there might be a chance for a wipe again. There is obviously no player control whatsoever over this.

The team is great, very good win/loss ratio, around 90% for me. But it has two weak spots. I personally prefer something more reliable that has only a single weak spot. While Owl can severely cripple heavily purple opposition, Infernus explosions essentially nullify that by providing more random drops. I don’t think there is a good alternative to Infernus here in terms of raw damage and extra turn chances.

I agree that the only weakness is, the first snowy owl cast. If all the gems are around 10 at the beginning of the game, owl mostly misses. Your 20 red gem miss is a unique thing. If that so, you should try to fill Asha before casting owl at the beginning of the game, and because of the 3rd trait of Asha and Owl, matching purple gems quickly fills Asha. I convert blue gems to other colors (red yellow or green), after that move I cast owl.

And I use WB instead of Infernus. WB explodes all of the gems and fills himself again, while doing that he fills the other 3 troops too. If he is not ready to cast, I use Asha to convert the blue gems into WB’s colors.

When the number of Gems of a specific color is less than ideal, one of the best ways I to get Snowy to connect is to observe what is surrounding the Purples and spawn what is adjacent. The reason for this is that Snowy can’t fill in the voids left by the Destroyed Purples and this leads to a lot of 4- and 5-Matches that happen in the cascade.